Dawn

Dawn

Sunday, March 30, 2014

The pricks of religion; Gullible buyers; Boats and cars; & just sayings.


I decided years ago it was a great advantage to be raised in one of the 3 great desert religions, as this would provide you with an endless source of humour. Personally, I was raised a Catholic and have been dining out on it ever since. Take the subject of the foreskin of the circumcised Christ . . . Despite the fact he can't have been seen as God at the time, his circumcised foreskin was allegedly retained by someone and, by the Middle Ages, there were as many as 19 churches claiming to hold the one true prepuce. One was the cathedral in Santiago and another - wait for it - was a church in Stoke-on-Trent. After almost 2,000 years, though, the Catholic Church finally realised it was all cock and bull and in 1900 banned all talk of the object, on pain of excommunication. That said, 'traditional Catholics' still regard January 1 as the Feast of the Circumcision and I seem to recall it featuring in my catechism.

A Spanish lawyer friend of mine helps foreigners buy property in Galicia. She's so good at looking after their interests that two local estate agents (one British and the other Dutch) have refused to sell properties to one of her clients if he involves her. Title to property can be complex in Galicia and neither of these agents wants to let possible future complications stand in the way of a quick sale and receipt of their commission. They'd rather stick to their standard line that the notary's involvement is all that's needed. Anyway, I thought of the willingness to believe this guff when I read that droves of foreigners, mostly British, had now started to take advantage of the significant falls in property prices over the last 5 years. Despite all the publicity on the duplicities of the boom years, I'd be prepared to bet most of these buyers opt to trust the team of seller plus agent. And this despite the fact every web page offering advice tells them to use an independent lawyer. Horses and water. Fools and money.

My dodge for getting off and on the ferry quickly worked wonderfully well on Wednesday night/Thursday afternoon. Less than 5 minutes in each case. In fact, I was the 4th car off, saving at least an hour's frustration in the queues for getting off and through Passport Control. Sadly, I then took a wrong turn in Plymouth and wasted half an hour finding my way back to the right road. Worse, the trip from Bristol to Merseyside on Friday was dogged by road works and by 'phantom jams' and took 6 hours instead of 3. You win some and you lose some. At least it gave me the chance to stress my daughter via "constant sighs of irritation". Allegedly.

Finally . . . A new English usage? It seems you can be as critical as you like of someone these days, so long as you add "Just sayin'" at the end of your diatribe. Internet driven?

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